Years ago, I took an interest in public policy with a focus on education issues. I wanted to serve the community and was blessed to be elected to the Worthington Board of Education in Worthington, OH. This blog will allow me to share thoughts on the issues of the day as well as providing constituents the chance to opine on those issues. These thoughts are mine alone and may or may not represent the thoughts of the Worthington School Board or our district's administration.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Last night, I attended a meeting of the Colonial Hills PTA where the subject of "Value-Add" came up. Value-Add is a metric that measures student growth - whether the student, grade, school or district achieved a years worth of academic growth for a years worth of time. Being the left brain type that I am, I wanted to understand in detail the algorithm that was used to determine this. Much to my surprise, the algorithm is not published and is not available, not even as a public record. I've been told that the algorithm is enormously complex and that disclosing it would not demystify it. In any event, I came across an interesting article on the efforts by the State of Ohio to smooth out the rough spots on the value-add calculation and make it a more reliable indicator. As you go through the article, make sure you click on the value-add primer and on Doug Clay's article on the yo-yo effect. The article is here: